Food mixing machines are commonly utilized by fast food establishments or the like, particularly those that blend condiments or other foods into ice cream in the cup for consumption by the customer with a spoon. The blending is typically performed by an agitator carried at the bottom of a rotating shaft. The ice cream and other foods to be blended are put into a cup and the agitator is positioned in the ice cream to blend the product. After use, the agitator must be cleaned to avoid contamination of the next product to be blended.
To improve such traditional activity, a disposable plastic agitator was developed which was in the shape of a spoon. In that device, the bowl of the spoon mixes the product and the handle of the spoon is hollow and is received over the rotatable shaft of the food mixer. The spoon shaft is provided with a clip which could be snapped over a rib provided on the rotatable shaft to attach the spoon to the shaft. The product is then blended and the spoon removed from the shaft. This system is advantageous not only because the rotatable shaft is protected from contamination, thereby saving the time of having to clean the shaft after each use, but also the spoon can be given to the user to consume the food thereby saving the establishment the cost of providing conventional spoons to the customer. However, these spoons with the hollow handle and the clip are quite expensive to manufacture. Moreover, the threading of the shaft into the handle while at the same time manipulating the clip to attach the spoon to the shaft is not easily accomplished in the time conscious environment of the fast food establishment.
There have been other attempts to maintain the advantage of the spoon shape while endeavoring to save costs of manufacture and time of use. In these situations, a food mixer is provided with a shorter rotatable shaft and an adapter is attached to the bottom of the shaft. The adapter is provided with an aperture to receive the handle of a spoon-shaped agitator. After the handle is positioned within the adapter, a cylindrical collar can be slid along the outside of the adapter to cause plungers to engage the spoon handle. While such a system can utilize spoons which are less expensive to manufacture, the adapter is not only complex and costly to manufacture, but also it is difficult to use. Specifically, the user must, with one hand, position the spoon shaft in the adapter and then, at the same time, with the other hand, slide the collar along the outside of the agitator to attach the spoon to the rotatable shaft. In a similar system, the plungers may be spring biased toward the spoon handle and held in place by the collar. But this system too is complex and costly. Moreover, these adapters and their movable parts must often be cleaned to prevent contamination and cleaning such adapters with their movable parts is problematic, at best.
The need exists, therefore, for a system which is inexpensive to manufacture and easy to use without contamination problems so that food products can be conveniently mixed while maintaining the advantage of providing the agitator in the configuration of a spoon to be used by the customer to consume the food.